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Westminster's Culture of Deference

The Legg Report on MPs' expenses says that some 400 MPs have to pay back a total of £1.1million, which gives an idea of the extraordinary scale of expense abuses taking place. The Director of Public Prosecutions is due to announce whether or not he will be prosecuting any MPs later today. One thing that perhaps indicates why MPs were able to get away with such abuse, unchecked, for so long, is the sheer level of ridiculous deference shown them in the isolated bubble of Westminster Palace. This piece on Iain Dale's blog is very illuminating in this regard.

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David Cameron could be forgiven if he enters the Tory
Conference week thinking about his place in history. This, after all, is a man who doesn’t have to
win another election, since he’s given himself a final term firewall against
any future electoral catastrophes. Not
only that, but he’s been able to witness Big Bad Jezza Corbyn’s utter
catastrophe of a party conference over the past week, with possibly only a few
hours off to mull over the deteriorating quality of western foreign policy
(currently sub-contracted out to the country formerly known as the Soviet
Union).

Corbyn is a delight in many ways. He’s not quite as different as a party leader
as some hopefuls are suggesting, admittedly.
George Lansbury and Michael Foot were also bizarre lefty true-believers
with a lofty disdain for practical politics, and both proved electorally
disastrous for the Labour party, albeit from a better intellectual vantage point
than the fuzzy minded Corbyn. But Corbyn
is the first of that mould …